Given that St. Louis Park School District needs to make large budget cuts in their schools; Given that specials such as PE, Art, Music, Band, Orchestra, Chorus, Gifted Programs, Social Workers, Reading and Math help are all slated for reductions in our elementary buidlings; Given that at present, there is no set Spanish curriculum, Spanish is not on our students' report cards, and there are no critical grade level outcomes for Spanish; Given that reducing the amount of Spanish instruction down from 3 times per week will not jeapordize the PYP IB applications of CM, SL, PH, or Aq, Given that 90 minutes of Spanish per week is not enough for "language acquisition", language proficiency, OR a conversational level of Spanish by 6th grade; and Given that parents at CM, SL, PH, and Aq are not interested in language acquisition or fluency for their elementary students at the expense of the other specialist programs stated above; We, the undersigned, request that the amount of Spanish Instruction offered at the elementary schools CM, SL, PH, and Aq be reduced from 4.0 FTEs to 2.0 FTEs. This will mean that an additional $100,000 need not be cut from our schools, and can be used to continue some of our other strong programs and specials.